The Ego takes to the lecturn at the Brooking Institute today...(Safe for Larry to speak without overwhelming Geithner, since Tiimmeh is in Europe trying to get the G20 to drink the kool aid, for their part the Europeans have already indicated they are behind the idea of expanding the IMF balance sheet, but they absolutely will not sign on to global stimulus spending)

At 10:30 a.m. EDT, White House economics adviser Larry Summers will deliver a briefing at the Brookings Institute in Washington DC.

lOne Question, WHERE THE HELL IS THE FINANCIAL SYSTEM PLAN TO DEAL WITH THE BAD PAPER?!?!

WOTS is the bad paper plan is not coming together because most of Team Obama was nurtured by Stiglitz’ and is following his lead, while Summers wants to go another way…

I would chime in, but as Summers’ has said I am a woman and cannot do math..(what a jackaxx he is)

A plan Obama was considering to buy illiquid assets on banks’ balance sheets amounted to swapping taxpayers’ “cash for trash,” Stiglitz, 66, said in January interviews at the World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland. “I’m hopefully shaping some of the debate and some of the policies and framing the discussion.”

Stiglitz’s work is cited in economic papers by more people than that of any of his peers, according to a February ranking by Research Papers in Economics, an international database. Obama adviser Lawrence Summers is 11th on the list and Federal Reserve Chairman Ben S. Bernanke 34th.

While Stiglitz’s long-held views on the drawbacks of unfettered markets are proving prophetic in the global recession, his outspokenness excludes him from government, said David Ellerman, who worked with the economist at the World Bank in the 1990s.

So what does Summers have that Stiglitz doesn’t?

“If you’re going to function well in a big bureaucracy, you’ve got to have a sort of self-control that Joe doesn’t have,” said Ellerman, a visiting scholar at the University of California, Riverside

OMG are you KIDDING ME?? Summers has self control and Stiglitz doesn’t? My gawd imagine what a piece of work Stiglitz is if he makes Summers look controlled..Jeebus!

Stiglitz also mentored several members of Obama’s economic team, including budget director Peter Orszag, 40, and Jason Furman, 38, deputy director of the National Economic Council. Still, Stiglitz is critical of how the president plans to rescue the economy and questions his appointment of Summers as his top economic adviser.

It’s “a real concern” that people such as Summers, “who have been openly on the side of deregulation,” are back in positions of power, said Stiglitz. The presidential adviser helped secure passage of the 1999 Gramm-Leach-Bliley Act, which repealed longstanding banking regulations.

A real smack down is coming..

When Stiglitz last worked in Washington, as chief economist at the World Bank, he clashed with Summers at Treasury and with the lender’s president, James Wolfensohn, by criticizing International Monetary Fund policies. Stiglitz said the IMF was hurting poor countries by demanding they cut budgets, raise interest rates and open capital markets.

When Stiglitz resigned from the bank in early 2000, his staff drew up a mock list of reasons for his departure. At the top: “Had Just Seen One Too Many Hot Summers in Washington.” Another entry: “To Find a Vaccine for Foot-in-Mouth Disease.” “Remaining silent when people are pursuing wrong ideas would have been a form of complicity,” the New York Times quoted Stiglitz as saying of his departure. “Rather than muzzle myself, or be muzzled, I decided to leave,” he said, according to the Times.

Oh that’s classy..

At the World Bank, Stiglitz repeatedly criticized IMF handling of the financial crisis that swept Asia in the late 1990s. He claimed austerity measures the fund demanded from nations looking for help risked pushing them into severe recessions. Stiglitz also questioned the IMF’s motives. “I worry a little bit about organizations whose function is to deal with crises,” he said in September 1999. “What are their incentives?”

Soon after leaving the bank, Stiglitz wrote in The New Republic magazine that fund staffers were “third-rank students from first-rate universities.” “There was probably nothing worse he could have said about them,” said Dean Baker, co-director of the Center for Economic Policy Research in Washington. Stiglitz’s bestselling 2002 book “Globalization and Its Discontents,” (W.W. Norton & Company, 304 pages, $16.95) denounced World Bank and IMF policies, along with the way trade liberalization was being pursued by Washington officials.

His writings and criticism of the IMF prompted an open letter from Kenneth Rogoff, then research director at the fund. “Joe, as an academic, you are a towering genius,” Rogoff wrote. “As a policymaker, however, you were just a bit less impressive.”

Guess Stiglitz won’t be helping Timmeh get the IMF in line BWAAAHAAAA, wonder what he thinks of our plan to expand IMF power and balance sheet to save Eastern Europe? Wow the fireworks should be grand, If only Team Obama weren’t listening to someone not even in the Administration over their own pick..good grief…